To some degree, what we have at the center of our attention has us.
Those words cannot be found in the Bible. But the idea behind them shows up from Genesis to Revelation.
Seems to me that one example surfaces in the words of Jesus when he said, “The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Therefore take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness” (Luke 11:34-35).
Here, the Teacher of teachers reminds us that, as a lamp is to a room, so the eye is to the body. Yet, Jesus uses “eye” not only in a physical sense but to represent the spiritual “attention of our heart” that determines how much light (and what kind of light) gets to our souls.
So why is Jesus taking the time to create word pictures for “the attention of our heart”?
The answer seems to be found in what the Son of God went on to say to religious leaders who, because of the attention of their hearts, saw others as objects to use, people to criticize, or followers to impress.
The immediate solution, according to Jesus, was to shift the attention of their “eye” so that the result would be to love others rather than using them (Luke 11:39-41).
So some questions I’ve been thinking about are, “From our Teacher’s point of view, Where should our “eye” be? And how can we make sure that we are not just focusing externally on Jesus, the words of the Bible, others, or ourselves?
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